This means that the fully movable dual display Quest 3's resolution improvement is notably bigger in practice than it appears to be on paper; essentially allowing the device's ≈+10-15% wider 110° FOV to be a "free upgrade" in terms of the otherwise inevitable regression in pixel density.

The two outer pills each contain a hybrid monochrome visible light/infrared camera whose captured format alternates between frames, and which are used for positional tracking of both the headset itself (using the monochrome feed for "inside-out" optical SLAM) and the Touch Plus controllers (using the IR feed to track embedded IR LED's), along with a 4 MP RGB color camera for mixed reality passthrough.

[17][18] During a private presentation to employees, Meta virtual reality vice president Mark Rabkin stated that there were plans for 41 new Quest apps and games to be released at launch;[19] during a digital presentation on June 1, 2023, Meta showcased Quest titles scheduled for the late-2023 launch window such as Assassin's Creed Nexus VR, Asgard's Wrath 2, Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, I Expect You to Die 3, Onward, PowerWash Simulator, Samba de Amigo: Virtual Party, Stranger Things VR, and Vampire: The Masquerade — Justice among others.

[22][needs update] According to a roadmap obtained by The Verge in February 2023, Meta planned for the Quest 3, internally codenamed "Stinson", to be released later that year.

[19] The Verge's roadmap corroborated files on the Quest 3, including schematics, shared in September 2022 by virtual reality analyst Brad Lynch.

[23] Ahead of an official announcement, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman published a newsletter on May 28, 2023, reporting from a private event where he had received a hands-on demo of a Quest 3 prototype codenamed "Eureka".

[24][25] Ahead of a VR gaming digital presentation later that day, Meta officially revealed the Quest 3 on June 1, 2023 via a video on Mark Zuckerberg's Instagram account.

[37][38] In a hands-on report published prior to the official unveiling, Bloomberg writer Mark Gurman found that the new AR passthrough mode was significantly better than any previous Meta products (including Quest Pro), with it being good enough to clearly read and use one's phone through, but that controller tracking was less accurate.

The user interface was also criticized for being largely unchanged from past models, lacking in application management functions, and having unclear migration paths for cloud save data from previous Quest headsets.